The Elegance of the Hedgehog

I haven’t read much fiction lately and cannot recall how I came across “The Elegance of the Hedgehog,” but what a gift it was. I never read anything else that was so hysterically funny and at the same time so profoundly sad. I could not wait to get back to it until turning the last page and once finished, I wanted to buy enough copies to give one to each of my friends and family members.

Written by the French novelist and philosophy teacher Muriel Barbery, the original French title is “L’Elegance du herisson”. I have to tip my hat to the English translator, Alison Anderson. It must have been a difficult job, and the translation is a work of art in itself.

Many people online accuse the book of being elitist. Elitist, it surely is. Peppered by references to Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy, 17th-century Dutch paintings, music by Henry Purcell and Gustav Mahler, Japanese art-house movies by Yasujiro Ozu, philosophy of Rene Descartes and Immanuel Kant, as well as a few chapters long scathing critique of the Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology, it is certainly not for culturally ignorant. I am glad that I read it on Kindle, where you can look up the words in the Oxford Dictionary and relevant articles on Wikipedia because the vocabulary far exceeds the limits of my working knowledge of English. And yet, it is not elitist enough to not become a publishing phenomenon and a best-seller not just in France but worldwide, including South Korea.

I am not going to turn this post into a full review. There are dozens of reviews online. If you were ever drawn to consider the meaning of life and the role of art and beauty in general, do yourself a favor, get a copy, and read. You will not regret it.